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If you're going to spend eternity pushing a couple tons of pig iron up the hill, you better make it two tons of Detroit pig iron!

Last week, you probably backed away in horror from the prospect of tackling one of a couple of big V8-powered hunks of (heavily oxidized) Australian Iron, in spite of the Holden HG and the Leyland P76 being so cool that every one of the executive parking spaces at Hades HQ boasts one or the other. Hey, we understand: If you're going to spend eternity pushing a couple tons of pig iron up the hill (only to have it roll back down, over your carcass, every time), you owe it to the Founding Fathers to make it two tons of Detroit pig iron!

Now, we've had to get a special dispensation from HQ to give you a couple of Hell Projects this easy, but not to worry—the Hell Garage demons will find a way to make these cars a little more impossible challenging!

Yes, we're talking about a <em>serious</em> muscle car here, not just Grandma's midsize coupe with a big engine and some tape stripes.

Just as the ever-narrowing nostalgic tastes of the baby boomers have condemned the rest of us to a lifetime of listening to the same 25 "classic rock" songs over and over and over until death enfolds us with merciful arms, finally smothering the sound of our 432,015th repetition of "Under My Thumb" coming from the Baby Boomer World Government-mandated PA speakers installed everywhere, so do the boomers' restrictive tastes in 1960s muscle cars make us wish for an escape from the 432,015th Chevrolet Chevelle SS 396 at any car show or cruise night on the North American continent.

To carry the music analogy further, let's ditch the handful of songs on the Boomer Approved™ Rolling Stones Playlist, all of which were released when the Stones were just some slightly naughty London boys bleating out some pappy pop for AM radio, and go for the automotive equivalent of a real Stones song, from the era when Mick and Keith and the rest were hopeless degenerates with needles hanging from their scabies-infected arms, the Weathermen and the Panthers were blowing up banks, and napalm rained down all merciless from an apocalyptic sky: the 1969-70 Mercury Marauder!

Yes, we're talking about a serious muscle car here, not just Grandma's midsize coupe with a big engine and some tape stripes. The Marauder was a vast two-door that scaled in at more than two tons, packed 429 of Henry's high-compression cubes under the hood and sported Badasstical American Dream™ presence rivaled only by the Chrysler Hurst 300.

Because the boomers have forgotten all about such serious machines (preferring instead the Super Bees and Judges they couldn't afford back in the day), you can pick up a 1969 or '70 Marauder project for reasonable prices. How reasonable? Take a lustful look at this 1969 Mercury Marauder in Mississippi (go here if the listing disappears), with its price tag of just three grand. It's hard to tell from the photographs, but are those X-100 emblems on the front fenders? If so, we're looking at the ultimate Junkie Rolling Stones Era Marauder.

Now, this car looks fairly solid (though there's no telling what sort of rusty surprises lurk beneath that vinyl top), and the seller claims the engine "runs good with no smoke." Seems like an easy project, right? Well, the thing is, some of those damn baby boomers have put a lot of the money you won't be earning with your generation's diminished economic expectations into their Ford Mustang fastbacks and Olds 442s, and that means they'll be showing up at your local drag strip in cars that will run 11s and 12s in the quarter-mile. It would be unacceptable for them to blow the doors off your Marauder (and force you to listen to your 382,339th repetition of the Beatles' "Run For Your Life" on the track PA while they do it), which means you'll need your daily-driven Marauder to get into the 10s, on street tires. The only one way to do that is money horsepower!

You could hit up Summit for a Ford Racing 580-horse crate engine, then add a great, big supercharger for good measure. And while you're getting that combo to work, you can replace every single driveline component with super-double-dog-overkill parts. Bodywork, interior work, the sensation of peeling off C-notes from a thick stack and tossing them into an incinerator—all of this will be your lot.

If you're willing to ship a car from the 50th state, you can find a Marauder for for a mere $4,500.

The 2003-04 Marauder came equipped with the quad-cam Modular 4.6 out of the Lincoln Mark VIII and Aviator, in this case making 302 horses. Like the Holden Monaro-based 2004-06 Pontiac GTO, genuine 2003-04 Marauders have a psychotic devoted following (the Ford Panther Jihad is not to be trifled with), making an affordable PCH-grade example tough to find.

See, if you're willing to ship a car from the 50th state, you can find a Marauder for for a mere $4,500. This one "drives smooth," though the smoothness might stem from the fact that it "Needs NEW ENGINE!!!!" The kaput engine (unfortunately, the four-cam version of the Modular 4.6 wasn't quite as bulletproof as the SOHC version that powered just about every police car in the country for the last couple of decades) shouldn't be considered a real problem, because you'll need to build a new one, anyway.

The supercharged Modular 5.4 that went into the Ford GT shouldn't bolt right into the Panther's engine compartment, and you should have no problem finding a reasonably priced Tremec six-speed to put behind it. Yes, you'll be building the Marauder that Ford should have made all along: supercharged, manual transmission and independent rear suspension. That's right: If you want to pass those boomers who spent your retirement money on their AMGs, you'll need an IRS to make 180-mph-plus speeds nowhere near safe.

Will you turn a wheelbarrow full of money into an MN12 rear-suspension swap, or maybe adapt a setup from (gasp) Germany to fit under your Panther? Such decisions confront you every day in the Hell Garage!